I am Dr. Jacques Vallée a computer scientist and former astronomer. I have dedicated my personal research to the scientific research of UFOs. I was the model for the French scientist in Steven Spielberg's "Close Encounters". AMA!

Hi Reddit!

I'm excited to be here with you all today and to answer any questions you may have. Here is my proof: http://imgur.com/WxbXLoJ

Recently my investigations have focused on UFO sightings from ancient antiquity up to the Industrial Revolution - prior to the innovation of manmade vehicles for flight that can cause confusion when witnessing a UFO. I have worked with my colleague Chris Aubeck on my recent work and we will soon be publishing what we consider the new benchmark in UFO research - called Wonders in the Sky. Our larger goal is to set the groundwork for future researchers (Maybe that's YOU) by identifying and conserving primary source documents. We want future researchers to continue UFO investigations as part of mainstream science.

I worked at the Institute for the Future, helping to develop the precursor to the internet, known as the Arpanet. You also may know me as the basis for the French scientist character in Steven Spielberg's film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Possibly you have seen one of my lectures (just click here and here for two videos); a panel about outer space at a global financial conference in Saudi Arabia and a TED talk in Geneva on Futures Research, respectively.

Looking forward to fielding your questions! AMA!

EDIT: Thanks Everybody for joining. My time is up. I have very much enjoyed answering your questions. Lots of really good ones.

You've hit on a significant problem: There is no unique definition for a UFO; Remember, the Air Force invented the term for aerial phenomenon that didn't match natural explanations, but what people are reporting goes way beyond that, like luminous "orbs" going through bedroom walls: is that a UFO or not?

One of my aunts saw ball lightning. She was in her bedroom, it was a hot summer afternoon and there was considerable lightning activity. There was a huge flash with a crashing sound and on her wall, (drywall, with plaster & paint), up near the ceiling there appeared a cantaloupe sized blue-white glowing thing. She said it sizzled and rolled slowly down the wall, across her floor and then with a loud bang and a flash it disappeared. She was sort of a mess after that when there was a thunderstorm. There was no marks on the walls or floor. A sycamore tree about ten feet away from her bedroom had been hit by lightning. The tree was killed.

I've seen a small, glowing, blue orb in my home. Those orbs and the larger orange orbs are being reported by many people from all over the world, including people having witnessed them from just a few feet away.

Yes, in France as a college student, a disk with a half-dome in the sky about half a kilometer away. The next day another student whose house was up the hill another half-kilometer away told me he's seen the same thing through binoculars. At the time I convinced myself it was some sort of prototype that would be revealed eventually, but as we know now there is no such thing. It hovered at low altitude for about 10 minutes at least.

I have to leave pretty soon, but many thanks for the great questions, and apologies for my bad typos. There's a description of Wonders in the Sky on Indiegogo (under "education") if you want to know more. Jacques

There is a large number of cases that pass the "serious" screen: cases with unexplained physical traces and multiple witnesses over significant duration, etc. but I mostly look for overall patterns that can characterize the phenomenon as a whole. One especially significant case took place at Valensole in France years ago and has never been explained: a landing with physical traces and two "beings" that paralyzed the witness. The French governemnt space agency has has a long-term group of investigation about such cases and I am on their advisory committee. Valensole has never been explained. Of course the paralysis has many scientists very interested. UFOs have many physiological impacts on humans.

By physical trace, they don't mean conclusive evidence of ufos, but that there is definitely physical concrete evidence of something. In this case, radiation is abnormal and shows something. Not necessarily ufos, but it's physical evidence

Background radiation doesn't vary enough for this to be a big problem (even hiroshima isn't that much more radioactive than background today, its something like 2x the upper end of background), and you can guess it based on the local area. In this sort of case, I imagine they find levels which are drastically higher than usual, and that lets you rule out background radiation as a cause. Obviously you'd check for local contaminants etc

Interesting, thanks! I'm going to read that and see what I can make of it. I believe it's definitely a possibility that we've been visited, but I don't want to simply rely on stories and speculation. I seems that this story was investigated properly which is why finding original sources would be awesome.

I have two questions. -Do you believe that Earth should be more cautious in the signals sent into space, in case other civilizations are listening? And do you believe that Science fiction, which shows life on other planets, will be something we see in our lifetime?

That was the reason the government killed PRoject OZMA (an early SETI-like exoperiment that would have beamed out from Arecibo) in the sixties: it would "give away our position"... Of course that's a silly argument: how old is "I love Lucy"? TV goes right through the ionosphere do the fols on Alpha Centauri have been watching it for years.

You understand that the signal is not a high-powered laser though, right? The little bit of radio fuzz making it to Alpha Centauri ftom our broadcast towers isn't going to be a usable, intelligible signal.

Curious, is there math behind that? I don't understand why an uninterrupted beam propagating through a vacuum would decay. I guess it makes sense that the flux through a small part of a 3 ly across sphere would be tiny enough to be undetectable even with a PMT's amplifier cranked up.

Because the signal decreases in strength by a squaring of the distance.

Imagine if you were to make a signal pulse, a deep space flare. The time duration is very short to maximize the distance it can travel. So you have a sphere that has say 1 made-up-units/ square meter on that sphere of say one light year radius. The amount of total energy on the surface of that sphere is always the same. Now after one year, the radius has grown by one light year. So the distance it traveled has doubled... but a simple bit of math says the surface area has grown much more than just doubling. And then after one more year? You can quickly see that while the distance traveled is a linear function of time, the energy density is decreasing exponentially.

Wouldn't the Doppler effect also smudge our signals? After all from light years away our plant is moving at high speed through space in a swirly path ... Would be like having an ice-skater mumbling a poem while twirling at high speed ... that would make it hard to hear for a guy sitting on a running zamboni in a different ice rink ...

Our signals don't make it outside the Milky Way. They don't make it out side our neighborhood. They don't even really make it (as in being distinguishable from random static) to the start next door. We can holla to Saturn three doors down and if we try hard enough we might be able to be heard in the courtyard outside. Any farther than that, and no one will heard you over the hum of the power lines outside.

I am puzzled by claims like his. Given his eminent position, he should be able to provide more than an opinion and he should come forward with evidence. Without some factual backup, that's just another expression of personal belief.

In an interview with RT (formerly Russia Today) in 2014, Hellyer said that at least four species of aliens have been visiting Earth for thousands of years, with most of them coming from other star systems, although there are some living on Venus, Mars and Saturn’s moon. According to him, they "don't think we are good stewards of our planet."

People put him on this pedestal because he used to be defense minister, but I really don't feel like he's very credible.

In November 2005, he accused U.S. President George W. Bush of plotting an "Intergalactic War". The former defence minister told an audience at the University of Toronto:

"The United States military are preparing weapons which could be used against the aliens, and they could get us into an intergalactic war without us ever having any warning...The Bush Administration has finally agreed to let the military build a forward base on the moon, which will put them in a better position to keep track of the goings and comings of the visitors from space, and to shoot at them, if they so decide."

Hi RocketTech: My approachj is that you have to catalog reports before you can identify the phenomenon. I try to do this is stages as more information comes to light. I also go out to investigate, of course.

When you investigate, what factors are you looking for? Are there any 'low-hanging fruit' you look for, such as atmospheric conditions you look for to possibly identify the UFO as a known phenomenon?And if I may throw in another question, has your research led you to a conclusion on the existence of visitors from another world or time (time travel)?

Absolutely I first screen for the usual confusion factors and I focus on cases that have not been sensationalized, where I have access to the site and to the witnesses themselves. Note that of course 90% of all reports can be explained with natural causes, of course.

They would have to be very close to us genetically, or whatever is sending "them" would have to manufacture their bodies consistent with human physiology. But there are other hypotheses. The phenomenon could be creating a sort of virtual reality illusion through which various entities could be acting among us.

User error, you could have access to the mightiest technology in the galaxy and it doesn't matter if the user is capable of mistakes.

Technology advances over time due to knowledge gained over time by the efforts of multiple generations, it doesn't make the individual creatures that use it any smarter or more capable, they just exist in an age where the technology and knowledge is common.

Right now there exists a large hadron collider, the product of thousands of years of knowledge gathering, testing and advancement that accumulated and was archived and expanded upon to the point that it was possible to build one, the groundwork was laid out by countless generations, it doesn't mean the scientists that created it are superbeings or were wholly responsible for its creation, its a team effort spanning generations.

Congress did make substantial edits to Wikipedia - they actually got banned for making so many edits like that but all the news articles about it suggest it was for saying things like Rumsfeld eats babies (which wasn't even among the actual edits when it happened.)

This is interesting. We are living in a simulated reality or a holographic universe, it is quite certain that 'various entities could be acting among us'. From your studies and research, have you any theories of the identity of the root of the simulated reality?

Do you think aliens have been on this planet? From my point of view I have always believed there is "something out there" but I am not convinced we have been visited due to the distance between us and the nearest planet that could support life.

I'm not sure the distance issue is an argument: new physics (like wormholes) would allow very fast communication among distant parts of the universe and perhaps also transport. Life and consciousness must exist everywhere. The UFO phenomenon has been with us on this planet since recorded history -- that's what our book is about. It doesn't mean "Aliens" in the usual sense, though. There could be multiple dimensions.

But wormholes are just a hypothesis, aren't they? I think the distance issue does have teeth, so to speak--based on what we know currently. Every other possibility is based on untested hypotheses and just wishful thinking. Not saying they aren't real, just saying the hypothesis doesn't rebut the distance issue.

based on what we know currently. Every other possibility is based on untested hypotheses and just wishful thinking

You have to remember that our science is just a few thousand years old, given that many species could have had millions or billions of years more than us to discover the universe, we shouldn't rule anything out based on our perhaps baby view of the universe (just look at how often we came to new discoveries in the past decades).

Yes, I agree. But not ruling anything out is different to making a large leap of faith. I'm keeping an open mind to a level of technology that we can't even dream about yet--but our science stands right now, it's impossible to traverse those distances--and the fact that we have not yet had a verified encounter with extraterrestrials tells us at least that such a level of technology is not available to many intelligent species out there. If any.

I like the work that's being done and discussed here. But it just seems doubtful that if aliens have visited us, they haven't made themselves known. It leads me to think that even the most inexplicable phenomena is not really inexplicable--it just hasn't been explained yet.

I agree with you, and it's not just the distance by itself but it's also knowing where to look. We've been around for an instant on a universal scale, and we are one tiny planet next to an uninteresting star in a moderately sized Galaxy. When there are 100 billion galaxies with billions of stars in each galaxy even having access to technology that allows travel through wormholes just doesn't help at all in actually finding what your looking for.

If some advanced race scanned our solar system even just one million years ago to see if an intelligent race were sending out signals they wouldn't have gotten anything and it will be quite a while before they finish the Galaxy and start back at old Sol again

Just to make that clear. There is no possibility in quantum physics that allows super-lightspeed communication. (No, quantum entanglement doesn't work that way!) And "new physics" like wormholes are also more fiction than science.

There are several classic cases in the USAF files that would deserve a lot more study, like the observations on board an electronic intelligence aircraft (RB47) that detected a UFO both visually and on radar over the Gulf of Mexico and was followed across Texas and Oklahoma by the object.

I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that he lends credence to government sources and the government was a lot more open/accessible back then. They had government bodies specifically that researched UFOs, even.

Yeah after all these really solid cases from the air force they locked down hard and decided seeing a UFO was a sign of mental instability and being unfit for duty. The way I understand it it's an unwritten rule that has made UFOs extremely taboo.

It's still taken quite seriously in the aviation industry. Although, you may be laughed at a little for believing in such things. There are serious reporting procedures for pilots and air traffic control pertaining to UFOs but I think the focus is more on the safety of air traffic and not to find out if it was aliens or not.

Okay, I honestly write off all UFO stuff as blanket "bullshit crazy shit until proven real" but, my perspective on your question is this: up tell 1970's our technology was pretty not advanced. There was a lot of dead-space for surveillance. If I were an ET or someone with a super advanced test-craft I might chance flying it over one of the major powers because their tracking was limited.

Sense then, things have grown. Granted our governments would likely hide it from us now but the idea that something could traverse with out being detected is unlikely.

Our technology would be rubbish in comparison to what an alien intelligence that has developed intergalactic craft and crossed a potentially massive distance through space to arrive at our planet would have developed, I doubt they would have any trouble evading detection, who knows what could be literally hovering above a city right now and distorting space around itself in a way that makes it invisible and undetectable.

It's possible another species had one or two significant breakthroughs in one or two specific areas that we haven't... maybe they figured out interstellar travel but not much else.

Imagine if some scientist here figured out how to create a warp drive today (and there's a chance this isn't at all fiction)... that ability doesn't automatically mean that every other area of technology gets a boost. I mean, creating a warp drive doesn't automatically mean we can cure cancer or give us cloaking technology for example.

I do think it's fair to assume that a species that could get to Earth is likely quite a bit beyond us technology-wise. That does seem to be a reasonable assumption... but it's not necessarily true... and also, the delta may be less than we think... compare us to ourselves just 100 or so years ago... we're practically gods now compared to our earlier selves! Aliens may only need to be that much beyond us for them to seem like gods to us, but it's not much in the greater scheme of things.

Okay tell me more please. I've read hundreds of UFO stories for years and years and never heard this one. What you've described is of particular interest to me as well, because a flight from the Gulf to Oklahoma would take a minimum of an hour, which certainly qualifies to an encounter of "specific duration."

Given the massive increase over the past decade of portable, relatively high-quality cameras that people are carrying with them everywhere, all the time, has there been a corresponding increase in the amount of photographs or videos of UFOs or related phenomena?

What exactly makes you certain of this? If you search for UFO videos on YouTube, or pictures on Google Images, how many do you find? Granted, the vast majority are going to be either fake, explainable natural phenomena, or explainable man-made phenomena (cameraperson mistakes an aircraft/quad copter/balloon/whatever as UFO), but that's always been the case with these things.

Since the question was about "reports" (with no regard to their nature or validity), I would have to disagree with you about the number remaining unchanged.

Yet another reason I need to try watching it again. I started it years ago, I got to the beginning of the part on the ship, the first sign of anything resembling a traditional movie. It had been like 45 minutes by that point and I was like fuck it. I've heard lots about it, some people love it some hate it. But it gets enough attention that I think I need to actually sit through it and judge for myself. EDIT: and this micro-review, as vague as it is, says a lot. I've been putting off actually watching it since I didn't like it the first time, this has convinced me to stop being a bitch

Also consider the book by Clarke and Kubrick, it's short and it's epic and if you don't know the story then the movie is unintelligible in many places (especially the end), which I think is partly why some people hate it.

The movie has great stuff in it, but if you couldn't get through the start then the end's gonna kill you. It's extra impressive to remember it was made before anyone had been to the moon or photographed "The Blue Marble".

Mars will be much more difficult than people expect because the main problem is biology: lots of unknowns and untested solutions. The question about infinity raises challenges for modern physics: the Big Bang would say the universe is a 4D sphere that expands into an infinite future but there are alternative models (the multiverse, string theory etc)

I think NASA is absolutely right in transferring LEO missions (Low Earth Orbit) to private enterprise, which has both the resources and the the motivation to do a good job. Long-range missions like the plans for Mars have to be the focus of NASA in the future. I wish there was more funding for some aspects of the NASA work, especially human factors (and research on microgravity) which could lead to medical breakthroughs down here on earth.

If you reffer* to the mushroom shaped cancer in his brain, that was caused by forces not yet understood. If not, then how dare you Sir/Ma'am!

(he would dislike me believing this) I strive to get as close to his thought patterns without the expense of courage needed for "Heroic doses" of entheogens before my actual initiation. Not for fear of anything but self-toxicity.

I agree he was a Badass of thought and that was his extra-dimensional downfall IMO.

I couldn't give you a percentage, but I'd have to assume the US government knows far more than I do or at least has far more DATA than I do. The problem is what they would do with that data, it could easily fall through the cracks, each agency trying to deal with little parts of it without anyone looking at the whole thing. So they probably just dismiss much of it, as the Air Force did. Rather than "disclosure" I would much prefer to see them acknowledge that there is an unknown phenomenon and call for the scientifuic community to compete by submitting proposals for basic research. That's the way the Internet started: many teams wrote proposals for networking, ARPA selected the best 10 or so and funded them, reviewed the results a year or two later, refunded the best ones and so on. That's the best way to do research, on a competitive basis by enlisting the best minds in various domains.

One thing we do know for sure is that the UFO phenomenon is extremely complex and does just boil down to "Aliens".

The way the CIA engages private and academic organizations for research and analysis assistance is through contracting - either publicly or using a pass-through entity to shield it as the financial source. It is likely that you know researches in your field who are unaware whom their bills are paid by, or are sworn to secrecy on that subject alone.

I understand that the military has top secret info about new flight-prototypes that could pose a security risk if revealed, sure. But why would information about prototypes from 30+ years back still be secret? Why couldn't the USAF just be like: "Oh that sighting 40 years ago was us, guys, project Pingu or whatever flew outta bounds"

Hi. I'm just wondering if you think that there are other planets very similar to ours that hold life? Could what happened to form our planet have taken place somewhere else also but at a different time making that planet at a different growth stage to ours? Thank you.

Among the 2000+ planets identified so far there may not be life similar to ours (the planets are too big or in orbits that would not be conducive to life but given the many billions of worlds out there a planet similar to ours is very likely. Of course one of the challenges is to define what we mean by "life." There could be other forms of consciousness (an intelligent plasma?) that we haven't discovered.

We may not see a complete cure for cancer in our lifetime, or a complete explanation for how our own brains work, so why should we expect to have an undeniable proof that UFOs exist? We have the same problem with ghosts, or artificial intelligence. But UFO witnesses are telling the truth and you can validate the patterns of what they describe, so the phenomenon undeniably exists. What we lack to call that a "proof" is a new scientific category (an "ontology") where we can put it.

I would guess no, there are two ways this could happen, an alien craft is actually captured and the event is made public (unlikely for a government to disclose this and even more unlikely we could hope to disable and contain a spaceship from another world, also foolish to be hostile towards creatures that might turn extremely sophisticated weaponry on us)

Or a spacecraft actually malfunctions and crashes, in which case it would be better left alone (who would want to be guarding it when the aliens come looking for survivors and wreckage?)

I edited for a third way and the most unlikely, an alien race makes first contact, unless they really want to cause us global problems and massive civil unrest, there are way too many irrational idiots that would be afraid of this happening.

From the videos I saw it looked to me exactly like the late part of a rocket launch. The reason it was so visible was because it was in the early evening when the plume was still lit by the sun, which had already set over the western horizon. The reason this particular phenomenon seemed so unusual is because it was unusual. Commercial rocket launches almost always point east to take advantage of the earth's rotation. This being a suborbital military rocket test, they had different critieria for choosing a direction, and since the launch was just offshore on the west coast, of course they would not launch east over a major population center.

So it was just coincidental that a military test took place at a time and location and with a specific launch profile that made it widely visible over major populated areas, and unusual because "normal" rocket launches would almost never duplicate those conditions to create that particular visual display.

OH CRAP - I really hope you are still answering questions Dr. Vallee. I wanted to ask - how did you come to the inter dimensional hypothesis and what role do you think psychedelics may play in validating or invalidating the hypothesis?

According to Alex Colleor(?) isn't that like where a group of aliens hide out? Like i recall reading somewhere that supposedly a civilization of beings has an entrance to their society around Mt. Shasta

On youtube search for the videos by Rob Buckle about crop circles. They're excellent. One angle he takes is looking at what some of the people who have admitted to making them say- people such as this guy Matthew Williams, who has a youtube show called "Circlemakers TV." They all say that there is indeed a paranormal phenomenon going on in the fields, and that's why they do what they do, not because they're just bored or something.

Anyway, seriously check it out. Rob Buckle has I think three videos, and the Circlemakers people have a documentary, and there are some serious new works also by Patty Greer. The conclusion from people like Colin Andrews, who first created the term crop circles, is that at least 95% of the British ones are made by people, but there are quite a few suspicious ones that quite possibly aren't, and, interestingly, they're not actually the biggest and most elaborate ones. The truth is, humans make some very elaborate crop circles, and that should be applauded.

It looks like I missed the party but I'll ask anyway I'm case OP comes back or someone else can offer insight.

Is there a "why" that's commonly held among researchers explaining why aliens have supposedly visited our planet so many times and not made contact with us? Why are they so concerned with not being seen or not actually communicating anything with us on a wider level?

Dr. Valle as your understanding of the UFO phenomenon grew you began to see it is far more complex and older than we imagined as in your groundbreaking work "Passport to Magonia". Since it was written where if anywhere has the most progress come in understanding the phenomena to present date in your opinion? And secondly do you realistically in your lifetime see us solving the puzzle?